


Ants, Humans, and Puppies

by GertieCraign



Series: Shade-Tree Mechanics [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Animal Planet's Puppy Bowl - Best Idea Ever, Cas Knows How To Entertain Himself, Cas Will Hang Out with Dean No Matter What Dean is Doing, Cas is not Human, Ellipsis Abuse, Friendship, Gen, Puppies are Hilarious Even to Two Seasoned Hunters and a Half-Billion-Year-Old Angel, Superbowl Commercials - Not Easy to Explain to a Half-Billion-Year-Old Angel, Swearing - Very Mild, They'd Probably Be Funnier in Enochian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 12:37:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10639992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GertieCraign/pseuds/GertieCraign
Summary: It's a hot summer afternoon. Dean's been working on the Impala, in the shade of a huge, old tree. Cas has been keeping him company the entire time.While Dean finishes up, Cas watches a colony of ants.Yes...it's just as riveting as it sounds. :-)  There's more to it, though. I promise.





	

“They’re ants, Cas.”

“You say that like they’re something mundane.”

Dean rolled his eyes and focused back on his toolbox. “Lemme guess...you find them ‘miraculous.’”

“Every living thing is a miracle, no matter how small or insignificant it may seem. And, yes, I'm aware that you are mocking me.”

Dean grinned. He wiped down the last of the crescent wrenches and tossed them into their compartment before closing and locking his toolbox. He raised himself off his haunches just enough to turn and sit on the lid.

Cas was stretched out on the gravel, chest down, chin resting on his folded hands, watching the tiny community go about it’s methodical and very important business. He seemed content. Almost happy.

Dean spent a few long moments just looking at his friend, wondering for the thousandth time what watching _humans_ must be like for the eons-old angel. Cas had seen the Earth itself radically change - continents remade as they drifted across the face of the planet. Nearly every kind of creature Dean had ever heard of had come into existence on Cas’s watch. From the angel’s perspective, humans were essentially brand new, and an _individual_ human would come and go in the blink of an eye. How did he really view these bizarre creatures that had caused him so much mayhem and grief over the previous millennia? And what must he think of the two brothers he’d decided to take on as his own personal charges?

Dean thought about the times he and Sam had been bantering over something stupid or pranking each other for no good reason, and he’d glanced over and caught the angel watching them with bright, liquidy eyes and a huge grin. Dean had always thought it was a little unnerving, but he didn’t understand why until he saw the same expression on Cas’s face one Sunday afternoon, several years ago, as the three of them had watched the Super Bowl. Or, in reality, Sam and Dean had taken turns watching the game while the other tried to answer the endless stream of questions. The game was hard enough to explain, but the commercials were a nightmare of cultural references and euphemisms, so to keep the peace, Sam had insisted they flip over to Animal Planet during the breaks. He wanted to see how Cas would respond to one of the most ridiculous and brilliant ideas ever broadcast on television. And that’s when Dean realized exactly where he and Sam stood in Cas’s eyes. The half-billion-year-old creature’s face lit up in the same goofy, delighted way watching Dean and Sam as it did watching puppies wrestle on a soft, green carpet. It was humbling, but Dean had been too buzzed at the time to get insecure and Cas had looked so damned happy there was no way either brother would have been able to hang onto an attitude, even if they’d wanted to.

At thirty eight, Dean was already starting to feel old...like he’d seen far too much. He knew that was a bit of an understatement, and if he included his time in Hell it actually made him closer to eighty, but four decades or eight, it didn’t matter. If he already felt tired and a little wiser than he wanted to be after just a few decades, what must it feel like after living millions of decades?

Seeing Cas in his vessel, fighting by his side, researching cases in the library... or just hanging out under a shady tree on a hot day, while Dean worked on the Impala...it was so easy to forget he wasn’t human. He wasn’t even a ‘he.’ In fact, he didn’t have any kind of physical body at all. Cas was a spirit. One hundred percent energy and intention. Even when he manifested parts of his true form, they were just best-guess approximations of what those angel-parts would be like, if he were a physical creature.  

But he wasn’t physical. Castiel was an angel. A straight-up, Old Testament, warrior of God. The stories, the beautiful statues, and especially those sickly-sweet little figurines...they had absolutely nothing on this guy. He was awesome in every sense of the word - more bad-ass than any superhero and more bizarrely terrifying than any sci-fi alien.

He was also a dork. There was no getting around that, and Dean had eventually stopped trying. The angel still needed to learn a lot about how to effectively live among humans, and as his friend, Dean was never going to stop at least attempting to help him out, but...there were certain things that made Cas...Cas. And Dean had no intention of ever trying to change those.

One particular form of dorkiness Dean could not wrap his head around, though, was Cas’s fascination with insects. Specifically social insects, like honey bees. It seemed unbearably dull to spend any amount of time at all watching these freaky little creepy-crawly or sting-y things gather food and take it home. But watching Cas now, it occurred to Dean that he was being really stupid about this. If Cas was the amazing creature he knew him to be, then maybe, just maybe, Dean ought to take a few minutes every once in awhile and pay attention to the things the angel found interesting. As reluctant as he was to embrace the idea, he knew that if he tried, he might just learn something from this slightly crazy, very ancient nerd.  

Dean stood and walked over to the car. He reached in the back window and pulled out Cas’s trenchcoat. Walking back over to his friend, he opened the coat and started to lay it down next to Cas.

“No, not there.” The angel made a motion with his hand and Dean felt the trenchcoat being taken from him, before he even had a chance to be confused. The next thing he knew, the coat had been placed opposite Cas, with the collar lying about a foot away from the angel’s face. “This way you won’t be breaking their path. And you’ll see them better.”

Dean was tempted to be annoyed, but he let it go. Bug-watching was Cas’s territory. Best to just let him do his thing and play along.

He laid himself down slowly, imitating his friend, but it was too uncomfortable. Even with the coat as a barrier, the gravel bit into his sternum and ribs. Dean grabbed the sleeves of the coat and after folding them up into thirds, he placed his elbows on them, pulling his chest off of the painful stones.

Comfortable enough, he followed Cas’s gaze down and quickly noticed the little moving stream of black making its way back and forth along the peaks and valleys of the greyish-white stones. He leaned in a little closer, until he had a very good view.

 


End file.
